The End of the West? Crisis and Change in the Atlantic Order, Jeffrey Anderson,

G. John Ikenberry, and Thomas Risse, eds. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,

2008), 312 pp., $60 cloth, $21 paper.

Few topics within the world of interna-

tional relations scholarship have attracted

as much attention in recent years as the

troubled state of U.S.-European relations.

Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it was

largely taken for granted that the close-

ness of those relationships would endure,

the Americans maintaining their leader-

ship and the Europeans following along,

albeit sometimes reluctantly. But Iraq

heaved a large boulder into the millpond

of our assumptions, and analyses of the

splash and its ensuing ripples have been

numerous. Some hold that the Atlantic

order will emerge just as strong, others

that it can never be the same, others that

it was never all that strong to begin with,

and yet others that we must now seriously

question its underlying viability.

This edited collection—with contribu-

tions primarily from U.S. and German-based

academics—is one of the latest additions

to the debate. In the words of the editors,

it takes stock of the state of the Western

alliance (p. 264), with three particular

goals in mind: to improve our theoretical

understanding of the logic of conflict

and crisis within the Western and inter-

national orders; to ask what academia has

to offer to the interdisciplinary research

agenda on Atlantic relations; and to use

the Atlantic crisis to examine the rele-

vance of theories of politics and interna-

tional relations (pp. 3–4). Individual

chapters look at the history of the transat-

lantic relationship, at issues of power

and security, at the role of trade and

economic relations, at the impact of in-

ternational institutions and law, and at

differences in values and political iden-

tity. Several contributors have a strong

track record in these areas, including John

Ikenberry, William Hitchcock, Charles

Kupchan, and Thomas Risse.

The ‘‘West’’ is defined rather narrowly by

the editors, referring to it as ‘‘the transat-

lantic order or security community’’ (p. 5);

and when they contemplate the end of the

West they are specifically thinking about

‘‘an end of the old grand strategic

80 recent books on ethics and international affairs

partnership’’ (p. 5) between the U.S. and

Europe, and its transformation into some-

thing new. Their overall conclusion is that

while the West has suffered a serious crisis,

it survives nonetheless. Of course, how one

views the condition of the West depends

on the evidence that one considers. If we

look at security and politics, then clearly

both sides have a vested interest in putting

aside their differences to deal with shared

threats. But does that necessarily mean that

the underlying indicators of the health of

the Atlantic order remain positive?

If the recent debate over the different

perceptions that Americans and Europeans

bring to their attempts to define and ad-

dress international problems is any meas-

ure, then the answer is no. The Kantian/

Hobbesian dichotomy reviewed by Robert

Kagan is only one small part of that de-

bate, which has since grown to incorporate

transatlantic differences over realism vs.

liberalism, modernism vs. post-modernism,

military power vs. civilian power, hard

power vs. soft power, unilateralism vs.

multilateralism, engagement vs. isolation,

and much more. Curiously, there is almost

no reference in The End of the West? to any

of these debates, in spite of their clear cen-

trality to questions about the health of the

Atlantic order, and in spite of this book’s

claim to investigate the prospects for the

scholarly research agenda, and to tie theo-

ry to the Atlantic crisis.

A debatable assumption made by the

editors is that the U.S. is the world’s only

remaining superpower, which view (they

claim) helps explain how it is more in-

clined to act outside multilateral rules and

alliances, and why its disputes with Europe

have become more common. Yet there is

an expanding body of literature that con-

vincingly argues that while the unipolar

analysis may have been helpful in the

1990s, it is no longer as supportable.

Europe, China, India, and Russia all pose

challenges to U.S. preeminence, as do the

mounting doubts about the utility of U.S.

military power and the country’s declining

international economic presence.

During the cold war, many of the differ-

ences between Americans and Europeans

were overlooked or ignored in the interests

of maintaining a display of unity in the

face of the Soviet threat. Since the end of

that threat, however, the cracks in the

edifice have widened, and for many

the German and French repudiation of

the U.S. position on Iraq was symptomatic

of broader and deeper ills that beset the

Atlantic order. While the questions posed

and assessed in The End of the West? are

interesting, they are no longer the most in-

teresting, and the book generally has a feel

of one whose arguments might have been

more pertinent back in 2003 or 2004, but

that have been overtaken by events, by the

academic debate, and by a different and

more sophisticated understanding of what

drives the Atlantic order.

It is indicative of the problem that the

sources cited in this book rarely date much

past 2005, and that there are many critical

omissions. The editors and contributors

also handicap themselves by focusing so

heavily on security, and by devoting little

attention to the expanding debate about

American and European positions on

human rights, terrorism, globalization, na-

tional identity, immigration, religion, the

environment, capital punishment, and a

host of related matters.

In short, while The End of the West?

sheds some light on the state of the

Atlantic order, its contributors do not real-

ly address the kinds of issues that now

recent books on ethics and international affairs 81

matter most in an international system

where many of the treasured assumptions

about the postwar international order no

longer hold true.

—JOHN MCCORMICK

The reviewer is Professor of Political Science at

Indiana University, Indianapolis, and author of

The European Superpower (2007).

82 recent books on ethics and international affairs